toreador, en garde
by curtaincall2
Summary: Takes place during 1x16. A different spin on Holt's bedroom.


Jake doesn't like any of the fancy-ass wine at Holt's party. So when he looks at Santiago across the room, and all he can think about is ripping that red dress off her, he's pretty sure it has nothing to do with alcohol.

She's smiling, she's talking about smart stuff, trying to impress Holt: but it's clear that she actually cares about art and poetry and classical music and all of that stuff Jake couldn't give a crap about.

He idly watches her mouth moving as she talks, outlined in red lipstick, watches her shift nervously from one foot to the other, unsteady in her high heels. He's always thought she was pretty, he's seen her in formalwear dozens of times before, but never-well, never in red.

Red is Jake's kryptonite. He's fucked girls in red rather than their hotter friends, has bought his girlfriends red lingerie, red T-shirts, red coats.

So Amy in red makes his blood rush, makes him want to politely excuse himself and run off somewhere he can be, ahem, alone. Although there's absolutely no way he could reconcile jerking off in Holt's bathroom. Once you've done that in another man's house, you're bonded for life in a strange, strange way, and Jake would like to avoid that strange bond with his boss.

He sees Amy running upstairs, despite the clearly labelled sign, and wonders what's impelling her to so uncharacteristically break the rules. Luckily, Jake has no such reservations about rule-breaking, so he's up the stairs after her before you could say "Ohshitwhydoesmypartnerlooksohottonight."

She's in Holt's bedroom, which, come on, did it have to be the bedroom? The linens are turned down and there's a faint scent of vanilla and Amy's bent over the TV remote looking somehow both domestic and sexy and it's just incredibly unfair.

"Peralta!" she says, turning around, and before he can think about what he's doing he's standing so close to her that two inches would bridge the gap between them. "Um, Jake, what are you doing?"

"So here's the thing," he says, softly, because after all they're not supposed to be up here in the first place. "I don't know if I've told you this before, but I sort of have this thing about red. Like, girls in red. It's like, you know, in bullfighting, when the guy brings the red cape into the ring, 'cause that makes the bull mad? I guess I'm kind of like a bull."

"You know," Amy says in this hot-schoolteacher voice, "that's actually a common misconception. Bulls are colorblind."

Jake shakes his head. "Well, I'm not, believe me. And, um, you're wearing red, like that red dress, and red lipstick, and it's kind of driving me up the wall. I'm sorry. It's weird. I'm weird."

"You're so weird," she says, with a half-smile and a rasp in her voice, and then of course he has to kiss her.

He's thought about kissing Amy before, but he thinks about kissing everyone, even dudes, and he's never thought about kissing anyone in this much detail, in all this surround-sound Technicolor glory.

She's up against the wall, now, and her skirt's starting to ride up and she's not bothering to pull it back down, which Jake takes as a sign that she's probably pretty into it. And her hands are in his hair, gripping it, pulling it, and it kind of hurts but in a good way. He lets his kisses move from her mouth down to her collarbone, even though he has to bend a little to reach. He's touching her hips, can feel them through the fabric of her dress, can graze the soft contours of her body. Her breasts are pushed against him, and he can feel her heart beating faster than he's ever heard it beat before. He wants to be closer to her, even though they're already touching at every practical point, wants to surround her, be surrounded by her, to subsume himself within her.

She tastes like red.

And it's just as his hands have moved slowly downward, and hers have loosened in his hair, and they're both panting like they've been running for miles chasing down a perp, that Terry walks in and starts screaming at them about violating Holt's privacy.

But when Jake looks at himself in the bathroom mirror that night, he can still see a spot of Amy's red lipstick smudged on his cheek. And he doesn't know what that means, but it's got to mean something. Right?


End file.
